For more specific examples of this trope, see Silicon-Based Life.
Other Elements
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Comic Books
- In Pre-Crisis days, Bizarros looked as if they were made of some kind mineral and were always described as being made of "non-living matter." It's anyone's guess what sort of matter that was, but the implication is that they were not organic.
Film
- Evolution has nitrogen-based life. Since this makes them giant piles of azides, they are literally Made of Explodium. Cleverly enough, evolution has turned this into an advantage: extreme heat catalyzes their rapid cellular reproduction and growth. Combined with rapid mutations, this is why they seem to evolve before our eyes, such as a field of them suffocating in our atmosphere, with one able to gasp for life long enough to start producing more offspring already better able to breathe our air, then growing wings and flying away.
- A medical examiner studying a Skrull corpse in Captain Marvel (2019) says while life on Earth is carbon-based, the Skrull is something that's not on the periodic table.
Literature
- Animorphs: While they don't discuss what element they're based on, the Venber in one story are "not carbon-based" — probably ammonia, as they melt above freezing temperatures. It's been speculated that ammonia-based life could exist on extremely cold planets.
- Arthur C. Clarke:
- A nineties story references "germanium-based consciousness," albeit as a long-complete Assimilation Plot by previously carbon-based aliens. (Germanium is directly below silicon on the periodic table.)
- The lifeforms on Jupiter in 2010 A Space Odyssey are hydrogen based.
- Another story explores the possibility of hydrogen-based creatures on the surface of the sun.
- In one Isaac Asimov story, it's mentioned that some of the native bacteria on the Spacer planet Aurora have fluorocarbon rather than hydrocarbon chemistry.
- H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising briefly mentions life on the planet Niflheim. It's carbon-based but uses fluorine in place of oxygen. Water is replaced by hydrofluoric acid and carbon dioxide by carbon tetrafluoride. Piper didn't come up with idea - he was presented with an introductory essay by Dr. John D. Clark describing life on both Niflheim and Uller (see entry above under "Silicon").
- The Outsiders of Known Space series are effectively bags of cryogenic superfluid helium. Their life functions and intelligence are entirely dictated by the interaction of currents inside their bodies.
- The Osmerian Conflict gives us the titular Osmerians who are primarily made up of the metal Osmium. However, we are never told how the molecule is represented in Osmerian anatomy.
- The Jan in Alien in a Small Town are described as having both silicon and carbon in their chemical makeup. They are extremophiles who are most comfortable in Earth's polar regions. Earth's temperate zones are hard for them to endure, and the tropics would kill them.
- In the Humanx Commonwealth novel Quofum, the xenologists who investigate the weird planet's surface are floored by the presence of multiple biochemical systems — carbon-based, silicon-based, sulfate-based, nitrogen-based, gaseous, etc. — existing side by side in the same ecosystems.
- The life forms of the planet Prism in Alan Dean Foster's novel Sentenced To Prism use both carbon and silicon in their biology.
- Dragon's Egg features the Cheela, made out of the degenerate matter found in neutron stars.
Live-Action TV
- The X-Files: The episode "Ice" features ammonia-based alien brain worms that rode to Earth on an asteroid in prehistoric times and are hiding out at the North Pole. It's never adequately explained how they're able to take over the bodies of the human scientists that were trying to study them, given the fact that not only is their biochemistry obviously incompatible, but being inside a human body for any length of time should have melted the little bastards.
- Doctor Who:
- The Krotons are tellurium-based. The story does not mention what would to chemists be the most immediate identifying feature of such biochemistry - that to human noses they would smell so foul that it would be impossible to stay in the same room as them.
- The Raxacoricofallapatorians (species of the Slitheen, from "Aliens of London" and "World War Three") are calcium-based. Vinegar is lethally acidic to them.
- Stargate SG-1 has sulfur-based aliens. The aliens themselves didn't show up as anything more than a picture, their automated probe was xenoforming an Earth-like planet into something their ecosystem could inhabit.
- One episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures features a boron-based alien.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS: Space has suggestions for life forms based on hydrogen, petrochemicals, ammonia, chlorine, stellar plasma, and even degenerate matter.
- Star*Drive uses a page in its Alien Compendium sourcebook to explain six different classes of biochemistry, based on "liquid medium," "reagent for cellular respiration," and "compounds or elements that can create very complex organic molecules," which correlate well with the GURPS supplement described above. Furthermore, each type is only found on certain classes of planets. These classes are Class 1: "Terran (habitable)," Class 2: "Minimal (minor life support required due to climatic extremes, atmospheric conditions, etc.)," Class 3: "Extreme (major life support required due to intolerable climate or atmosphere)," Class 4: "Space (including asteroids, rings, etc.)," and Class 5: "Jovian (extreme life support required)."
- The series of life are Series 1: Water medium, Oxygen reagent, Carbon structure, Class 1/2 environment; Series 2: Ammonia medium, Hydrogen reagent, Hydrocarbon structure, Class 3 environment; Series 3: Water medium, Chlorine reagent, Carbon structure, Class 2/3 environment; Series 4: Sulfur dioxide medium, Sulfur trioxide reagent, Carbon structure, Class 3 environment; Series 5: Sulfuric acid medium, Oxygen reagent, Silicone structure, Class 3 environment; Series 6: Sulfur medium, Sulfur dioxide reagent, Fluorosilicone structure, Class 3/5 environment; and Series 7: anything that doesn't fit into the biochemistries described above.
- In Rocket Age the unknown surface of Venus, deep below the mists and incredibly hot, is inhabited by the Triodi, powerful psychic crystalline creatures that feed on the chemical soups that form there. These creatures' corpses are the source of the Venusian''s psychic crystals. They are incredibly territorial and dislike the 'meaty' creatures above them. Thankfully they don't know about other sophonts, yet.
Video Games
- The volus of Mass Effect hail from a planet with an ammonia-based biosphere and a high gravitational field. This means that the volus can't survive in the oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere most other races, including humans, hail from. Volus need to wear high-pressure suits at all times, which not only lets them breathe gasses that are more tolerable to their physiology, but also keeps them from bursting open in a low-pressure atmosphere.
- The planet Freaze from Meteos has extremely cold temperatures; -120 degrees F is the highest temperature. Its Starfish Alien inhabitants are more along the lines of of 40-meter tall sentient glaciers than organisms in order to live in such a harsh environment.
Western Animation
- On The New Adventures of Jonny Quest we have Hardrock. The man of living stone was an ancient human whose body had been changed by radiation into solid carbon.
- The gems seen in Steven Universe appear to be female humans, if a bit oddly-colored, but their true forms are the magical gemstones embedded in their bodies. The rest is a projection made out of Hard Light which they can replace, reshape, or even combine with others as needed. Steven, being a Half-Human Hybrid, is the only exception. Said gemstones come in such wide varieties that only some of them, such as Peridot and the Quartzes, are literally based on silicon. Ruby and Sapphire are Aluminum-based (although they fuse into a gem named for a silicate), while Pearl and the Diamonds are technically also carbon-based (though not still not organic in a biological sense).
- A minor recurring character in the later seasons of Futurama was the Borax Kid, a southern fried-style gambler resembling a man made out of borax minerals.
Real Life
- Sulfur-oxidizing bacteria exist on Earth. The purple sulfur bacteria
are photosynthetic, anaerobic, and are found in hot springs or stagnant water. They do not use water for reduction and thus do not produce oxygen. Instead, they oxidize hydrogen sulfide to produce elemental sulfur which in turn may be oxidized to produce sulfuric acid. That said this is a Subversion, as even if they don't breathe oxygen, they're still carbon-based like all other earth organisms. - In 2011 it was proven that metal oxides can function in a manner similar to carbon compounds in the formation of life.
